1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a gaming machine, and a control method thereof.
2. Description of Related Art
In a conventional slot machine, when a player inserts a game medium such as a coin, a bill, or the like, into an insertion slot of the slot machine and inputs a spin button, several symbols are scrollingly displayed on a display which is provided on a front face of a cabinet, and then the respective symbols are automatically stopped.
In such a slot machine, when a predetermined combination of symbols is stopped on a winning line, a predetermined number of game media are paid out, as disclosed in specifications of U.S. Pat. No. 6,604,999B2, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2002065124A1, or U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20040053676A1 for example. This type of slot machine produces an effect for generating expectation for paying out of the gaming medium. For example, a background image is changed, or various characters are introduced, to cause player's expectation for a jackpot. Like this, producing an effect for causing player's expectation is a large factor in improving attraction of the slot machine.
In this respect, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2004-135901 or Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2007-007172 discloses such a gaming machine that, for the purpose of improving presentation effect, when a predetermined condition occurs a player inputs a voice into a microphone, to thereby change an effect.
However, in this gaming machine, simply, effect is determined in accordance with utterance of the player. It has not been possible to produce such an effect that a stream of talks, topics, or the like which is prepared in advance is successively outputted to the player while responding to the utterance of the player.
On the other hand, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20070094007, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20070094008, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20070094005, and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20070094004 disclose a conversation controller which can successively output to a user a stream of talks, topics, or the like which is prepared in advance, while responding to utterance of the user.
Thus, an object of the present invention is to provide a gaming machine having entertainmentness unobtainable from the above-mentioned prior art and a controlling method thereof, by providing the conversation controller to the gaming machine so that in response to player's utterance an answer corresponding to increase/decrease in game value occurring in a game is outputted to the player.